State v. O'Dell
| Decision Date | 13 May 1916 |
| Citation | 157 N.W. 870,176 Iowa 337 |
| Parties | STATE v. O'DONNELL. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from District Court, Lee County; W. S. Hamilton, Judge.
A jury found the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree, and directed that capital punishment be inflicted. Sentence passed accordingly, and defendant appeals. Reversed and remanded.A. T. Marshall, of Keokuk, and J. M. C. Hamilton, of Ft. Madison, for appellant.
George Cosson, Atty. Gen., and John Fletcher, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
Inez, the wife of the defendant, was discovered in a dying condition, because of statements made by defendant when more or less intoxicated, which led to an entry into the building wherein the couple lived. The searchers went to the basement because of groans heard, and the woman was found lying on its floor naked and unconscious. She died soon thereafter without having spoken intelligently, and from the effect of many and horrible wounds which in their very nature could not have been self-inflicted. No witness other than the defendant is able to speak of his own knowledge concerning the assault. The state charges defendant with causing the death with blows and bruises.
We are of opinion that the sentence of death imposed should not stand. The majority reaches this conclusion because it finds the evidence does not justify a conviction for murder in the first degree. While we are agreed that the sentence of death should be canceled, some members of the court think this may be accomplished without reversing for insufficiency of the evidence to sustain a verdict of murder in the first degree. In these circumstances we feel impelled under the rule in State v. Asbury, 154 N. W. 919, to refrain from more discussion of the evidence than is necessary to determine whether a conviction for murder in the first degree can be sustained.
[1][2] The effect of canceling the death sentence by a reversal on the ground that an unwarranted verdict was returned and canceling it while sustaining the verdict is so different that it becomes necessary to determine whether the verdict returned is warranted. Section 4728 of the Code defines murder in the first degree to be, inter alia, any kind of “willful, deliberate and premeditated killing.” To sustain the verdict we must be able to find, not only evidence of murder, but of additional elements which are as essential to convict of murder in the first degree as is evidence that any murder was done. That this is so is settled by our decisions that the indictment is not one for murder in the first degree if it charge no more than that the killing is merely willful and premeditated (State v. Boyle, 28 Iowa, 522); that, in addition to charging that the assault was willful, deliberate, and premeditated, it must be charged that the blow constituting the assault was dealt with the purpose of killing (State v. McCormick, 27 Iowa, 402;State v. Watkins, 27 Iowa, 415); that the charge of the specific intent to kill must not by the indictment be left to inference (State v. Linhoff, 121 Iowa, 632, 97 N. W. 77); and by our holdings that the proof must tend to show a specific intention to take life; that premeditation implies more than deliberation and means to meditate and deliberate before concluding to do the deed; that it means not only to take life willfully, but to predetermine and to contrive by previous meditation (State v. Gillick, 7 Iowa, 311;State v. Johnson, 8 Iowa, 525, 74 Am. Dec. 321;State v. Sopher, 70 Iowa, 494, 30 N. W. 917;State v. Hockett, 70 Iowa, 442, 30 N. W. 742;State v. Shelton, 64 Iowa, 333, 20 N. W. 459;State v. Perigo, 70 Iowa, 657, 28 N. W. 452). The existence of this intent cannot be presumed as a matter of law. State v. Carver, 22 Or. 602, 30 Pac. 315. While the essential premeditation need not be of long duration, and may be established by inferences justifiably to be drawn from the circumstances attending the crime in inquiry, it will be found that these are more often than otherwise drawn from the nature of the weapon employed, if any, and the manner of its use (Com. v. Woodward, 102 Mass. 155), or drawn from the manner of obtaining the weapon, and from evidence bearing on whether it was provided by accused beforehand rather than seized hastily in the heat of an affray (Taylor v. State, 108 Ga. 384, 34 S. E. 2).
[3] We find that the evidence as a whole tends rather to negative than to prove the existence of this essential specific intent. As to the suggestion that the prior conduct of the defendant made it a jury question whether the last assault was made with specific intent to kill we have this to say: The appellant was of a tyrannical and unfeeling disposition, which drink exaggerated. He made prompt settlement of domestic differences with curses and blows. On each recurring carousal he hearked back to that time in which the right of human brutes to whip their wives was unquestioned. But none of these assaults, bad as they were, were made with a deadly weapon. Giving to each recurring one its most sinister aspect, none was of a character more grave than an aggravated and inexcusable assault and battery. None of these prior acts were done with intent to take life. Therefore they afford no sufficient evidence upon which to find the existence of such intent in the last assault. See Shelton v. State, 34 Tex. 662.
The indictment charges the killing was done by means of a heavy iron poker, or other deadly weapons to the grand jury unknown. There was found in the house a poker, an iron rod about four feet long and something over half an inch thick. A blow from it, when dealt by a strong man, even with moderate force only, would readily break bones or crush a skull. No bones of the deceased were broken, nor was her skull fractured; and, while a wound across the forehead, the most severe single wound found, penetrated to the bone, the physicians agree it was not mortal. No blood was found on the poker, and the only support for the inference which the state draws that it was used as a weapon, or that a deadly weapon was used, is that it was found in the room where the parties lived, and the nature of the wounds. The record tends to show that deceased either fell or was thrown down the basement stairs, and, if appellant as a witness may be believed, such fall occurred at least twice. While it is difficult to account for all the wounds by such falls, even one such plunge may well have produced many of the abrasions and bruises which disfigured the body. The condition of the living room and of its furniture and the clothing scattered about indicate a struggle had taken place, and that the clothing was removed or torn from the woman's body before the parties went or fell into the basement. This inference is strengthened because the naked body of the deceased was grimy with dirt and coal dust off the basement floor, and because upon this floor were tracks of bare feet and other marks such as might have been produced by crawling upon or dragging a body across that floor. No one mortal wound or injury was revealed by the superficial examination of the corpse or by the autopsy, but it is reasonably certain the effect of all the injuries combined was sufficient to cause death upon a body weakened and devitalized by a most wretched life.
The last assault was not essentially more brutal than the ones that preceded it; for the evidence tends to show that defendant had on other occasions stripped the clothing from his wife and beaten and choked her unmercifully. The natural, if not the only reasonable, conclusion is that this final attack was one of habitual outbursts of savagery. While each and all of them were inexcusable and outrageous beyond words, they fail to show beyond a reasonable doubt the specific intent to kill. Even those of us who do not in terms agree that the evidence was insufficient do say that a doubt may reasonably be entertained as to whether a specific intent to kill is sufficiently established, that the existence of this intent is a more open question than any other question presented, and the strongest position taken by them is that, while the state is not wholly without evidence of such intent, it must be conceded that its showing thereon is weak, and that canceling the death sentence may be more readily agreed to because of their belief that we have a discretionary power to reduce the punishment to life imprisonment. In a word, it would seem that we are in substance and effect agreed that the evidence does not satisfactorily sustain a conviction of murder in the first degree.
[4] II. It is suggested that Code, § 5462, enables this court, without reversal, to change the capital sentence to one of life imprisonment. A fair construction of that statute is that, if it “do not affect the substantial rights of the parties,” the Supreme Court may, inter alia, not only reverse, but may: (1) Modify; or (2) “render such judgment on the record as the law demands”; or (3) what is, in effect, the same thing, “render such judgment as the district court should have done.” What the Legislature intended by these grants must be resolved under the rule that statutes are not to be so construed as to make their constitutionality even a matter of fair doubt, if such construction be in reason avoidable. Hunter v. Colfax, 154 N. W. 1046. The Constitution (article 5, § 4) constitutes this court one “for the correction of errors at law.” It is plain that to set aside a verdict because it is not sustained by the evidence is an appellate correction of an error at law. Wherefore we have not hesitated to reverse on the ground that the evidence fails sufficiently to show premeditation. State v. Nolan, 92 Iowa, 491, 61 N. W. 181. To correct the failure to render a judgment due as matter of law, or for this court to enter one thus demanded, may be constitutionally permitted, because either is clearly the correction of an error at law, or of avoiding the making of such...
To continue reading
Request your trial